The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag (11 page)

Our intention is to totally eradicate
death within the next five years.

An impossible dream?

Not a bit of it.

Through the use of our advanced
neural-network scanners we are now able to download the memory and personality
of an individual into the NECRONET.

The NECRONET is a virtual world,
computer-simulated, fully accessible and of boundless dimension. Nothing short
of a heaven on earth, in fact. Those downloaded into it will become immortal,
capable of being accessed by their children, grandchildren and so on endlessly.

An opportunity of a lifetime?

No, the opportunity of many lifetimes yet
to come.

And all this could be yours.

For a small fee.

Billy
screwed the paper into a ball and flung it onto the floor. One sheet remained
and he idly perused it.

EARN BIG ££££

read this one:

Do you have an elderly or infirm person living with you? One whom you
dearly love, and whose needs you minister to daily? How about sending them on
the journey of a lifetime? With all expenses paid and a big cash bonus for you?
Like the sound of it? Phone this number for further details:

Billy
sat awhile and stared into space. His fingers found themselves toying around
with the bright plastic something. It was warm to the touch and it gave at the
edges. There was something pleasurable about it. Billy bounced the something
gently on the table. He had been expecting this. This or something like it. A
package in the post, an offer on the phone. The chance of a lifetime in one
form or another. But he hadn’t been expecting it today.

Which
made it perfect, really.

Billy
had taken no employment, although much had been offered him. He had waited
patiently for The Opportunity to present itself. He had followed Hugo Rune’s
Law, that the greatest opportunity must present itself in the least most
obvious way. And the least most obvious way of finding employment was to stay
at home and avoid looking for it.

Billy
smiled. There would be a job for him at Necrosoft. And a big cash bonus when he
handed Granny over. Billy was perfectly capable of reading between the lines.
Necrosoft were obviously looking for some old and infirm types, that no-one
cared much about, to experiment with in order to perfect their neural-network
scanning techniques. It was the way he would have gone about things if he’d
been running the show.

‘And I
soon will be running the show,’ said Billy, picking up the telephone.

The Secret of Eastern Moguls

Swanky stretch-limos from faraway states

With Arabic symbols on gold licence plates,

Driven by sheikhs, you can see by their smiles

Own gardens the size of the whole British Isles,

And more fine women than our dog’s had fleas,

And thousands of acres of valuable trees,

And Turkish Delight that they order by phone,

And barrels and barrels of Eau de Cologne.

I once met the son of a rich potentate,

Who taught me the way to fish peas from your plate.

When you’ve nothing at all but your fingers to eat ‘em,

I tried it myself and quiet frankly was beaten.

7

God
must really love the working class,

I
mean, he made so many of them.

ANTON LAVEY

I awoke with a terrible
pain in my head.

‘How
are you feeling, chief?’ Barry asked.

‘Like
shit. What hit me?’

‘Danny
hit you, chief.’

‘Danny?’
I rubbed at my head and I looked all around me. I was lying in an alleyway. It
was the real McCoy all right. Bar back door with a neon sign above, fire escape
with retractable bottom section, lots of scrunched-up paper and cardboard
cartons. I cocked an ear.

‘He’s
gone for his lunch,’ said Barry.

‘Who
has? Danny?’

‘The
saxophone player, chief. The one you were listening for. The solitary sax
player who always sits at an open window playing mournfully to add that extra
bit of atmosphere to an alleyway like this.’

‘Fine,
so where’s—’

‘I’m
here,’ said Danny, looming in my direction.

‘Don’t
breathe on me,’ I told him, ‘and don’t loom so close.’

‘Some
thanks,’ said Danny.

‘For
knocking me out?’

‘For
saving your life.’

‘Are
you kidding, or what?’

‘He’s
not kidding, chief, listen to what he has to say.’

‘I
saved your life,’ said Danny.

‘Are
you kidding, or what?’

‘Put a
sock in it, chief.’

‘Oh, do
excuse
me.’

‘I
followed you,’ said Danny, looming a little further away. ‘I got fed up with
being walloped by male nurse Cecil so I upped and awayed.’

‘Feathered
wings?’ I enquired.

‘Nah. I
tried to figure out what was the least most obvious way of escaping, but then I
figured that if I
could
figure out the least most obvious way, then it
couldn’t really be the
least
most obvious, because I’d obviously—’

‘Frankly,
I don’t care,’ I said. ‘So why did you hit me?’

‘To
save your life, I told you.’

‘Are
you kidding, or what?’

‘Chief,
the humour of that line frankly evades me.’

‘So
sorry, Barry. Please continue, Danny, but keep down wind.’

‘A
while back,’ said Danny, ‘I met this mendicant in a pub and he told me a story
about hitch-hikers. You see there is a fleet of old VW Campers and they—’

‘Heard
it,’ I said.

‘About
how they recycle dispossessed people?’

‘Heard
it.’

‘Have
you heard the similar one about the woman who pretends to be a nurse and hangs
around in mental hospitals waiting for patients who are hoping to escape?’

‘Er,
no.’

‘Well,
she takes them in her car off to this house in the middle of nowhere and they
go inside and—’

‘I don’t
wish to know. Thanks very much for getting me out of there.’

‘No
sweat,’ said Danny. ‘You’d have done the same for me.’

‘That’s
not altogether true.’

‘Well
you’re best out of there, that’s for sure.’

‘Too
right.’

‘I
mean, how much could you have taken?’

‘Of
plunging to my death in a mincing machine? Not too much, I should think.’

‘I’m
not talking about a mincing machine. I mean the other thing, her thing.’

‘Her
thing? You mean it’s an even worse thing?’

‘Damn
right. According to the story I heard, this woman keeps her victims there for
months.’

‘Months?’

‘And
does it to them again and again and again.’

‘Does
what?’

‘Screws
them. Like sex slaves, makes them have sex with her morning, noon and night.’

‘Don’t
hit him, chief.’

‘You’re
too late, Barry.’ I caught Danny a fine right-hander and sent him into the
cartons. ‘You stupid bastard!’ I told him.

‘Look
on the bright side, chief.’

‘What
bright side?’

‘Well,
if you’d spent months as a sex slave, you’d never get your case solved, would
you?’

‘No, I
reckon you’re right.’ I climbed wearily to my feet, went over to Danny and gave
him a good kicking.

‘Got
that out of your system, chief?’

‘Yes,
Barry. I have.’

‘Jolly
good. So where to next?’

I
pointed to the neon sign. ‘What does that say to you?’ I asked.

‘It
says EXIT, chief. But then what do I know?’

‘Wake
up, Barry. I’m in Lazlo Woodbine mode here. Knocked on the head at the end of
the first chapter. Wake up in an alleyway. Woodbine only worked the four
locations, didn’t he, so what’s next on the list?’

‘A bar,
chief, where you stand around talking a load of old toot. Something you excel
at.’

‘I
shall ignore that remark. But a bar it is. And would you care to hazard a guess
as to the name of this bar?’

‘Might
it be Fangio’s Bar, chief?’

‘Isn’t
it always?’

And it always is. Or, at
least, was in the Lazlo Woodbine thrillers. Woodbine’s best buddy was Fangio
the barman. Woodbine always went into Fangio’s, talked a lot of toot and met up
with a dame in trouble. The significance of this dame’s trouble would not be
immediately obvious, but it would cleverly dove-tail in with whatever case
Woodbine was working on. The dame would inevitably do Laz wrong, but then dames
always do, but he’d get her in the end, and she’d help him solve the case. That’s
the way Woodbine did business, here or there, or elsewhere.

‘Come
on then,’ said Barry. ‘Let’s get it over with.’

I pushed open the exit
door, stepped along a dingy hallway and out into a bar of equal dinginess.

I say ‘of
equal dinginess’, but this doesn’t quite paint the poodle. This bar was drab.
Which is to say, it was lacklustre. Here was a cheerless bar, uncomforting and
uncongenial. A dismal bar, lugubrious, funereal and dull. A bar that was gloomy
and sombre, long-faced and woebegone. A bilious bar. A tearful tap-room. A
doleful dive. A pulch— ‘Turn it in,’ said Fangio. ‘I’ve just had the place decorated.’

I
copped a glance at the fat boy. There he stood behind the counter, large as
lard and smiling dike a dead cat on the road to Hell. Fangio was girthsome, which
is to say— ‘I said, turn it in.’

‘I’m
sorry, Fange,’ I said. ‘I was just thinking out loud.’

‘Well
if
it’s a running gag, then it’s a shitter.’

Oh how
we laughed.

Although
I don’t remember why.

Fangio
called me over to the bar and I sat right down before it. ‘New stools,’ I said,
as I comfied myself.

‘I
bought them in a job lot,’ said the fat boy.

And we
laughed again.

And
then we stopped.

‘The
humour of that is quite lost on me,’ said Fangio.

I took
off my fedora and twiddled with the brim. ‘I think it’s word association and
toilet humour,’ I explained. ‘You said “shitter”, I said “stools”, you said “job”,
as in “jobbie”, and then we both laughed again.’

‘What a
pair of characters we are,’ said Fangio.

And
this was true. We were.

‘So,’
said Fangio, once we’d both stopped laughing and he’d served me with a shot of
Bourbon and a plate of Twiglets. ‘Now we’ve put the stools behind us, as it
were, let’s turn our attention to the chairs; what do you think?’

I
viewed. Fangio’s chairs. ‘Disproportionately large,’ I said. ‘Where did you buy
them?’

‘At Big
Chairs R Us.’

‘And
these were the biggest they had?’

‘These
were the smallest.’

‘I see,’
I said. But I didn’t.

‘I can
see you see,’ said Fange. But I don’t think he did.

We
laughed again, just to be on the safe side, and I tucked into my Twiglets.

‘So,’
said the fat boy, ‘any luck with the case?’

‘It’s
not a case,’ I told him. ‘It’s a handbag.’

‘A
handbag?’ Fange whistled. ‘All I hear today is “a handbag”, “a handbag”.’

‘Do
you?’

‘Yes,
indeed I do. Take this morning, for instance. I’m standing here behind the bar
minding my own business when this bloke walks in. Ordinary bloke, smart suit
and tie, polished shoes, but something odd about his head.’

‘His
head?’

‘Tiny,’
said Fange. ‘He’s got a tiny head, about the size of an orange.’

‘You’re
making this up.’

‘I
swear I’m not. Well, the bloke orders a beer, but he can see I’m staring at him
and he says “Go on, ask me, then,” and I say “Ask what?” and he says “About my
head.” And I say, “I had no intention of asking you.” And he says, “Well, I’ll
tell you anyway,” and he does.

‘“I
wasn’t always like this,” says the bloke, pointing to his tiny head. “Once I
was chief petty officer ‘on
The Mary Grey,
a pleasure cruiser out of San
Francisco. I’ve always been one for the women, you ‘see, and a job like that
was right up my street. Smart uniform and plenty of unattached females looking
for love. I was at it morning, noon and night, it was marvellous.”‘